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Travel has been identified as a significant contributor to psychological well-being. The recent COVID-19 global pandemic disrupted travel patterns and behaviours, thereby negatively affecting the psychological health and well-being of those involved. With accelerating technology use, multiple forms of virtual tourism have emerged as alternatives to physical travel, including travel via webcam. Webcam travel has received limited scholarly attention, despite the unique capacity of global place-based webcams to offer cost-free, real-time viewing of places and destinations. Similarly, there has been limited research on how participation in webcam travel influences psychological well-being. This research note examines how the digital experience accelerates the hedonic and eudaimonic psychological well-being of webcam viewers by proposing a new model – Webcam Travel DREAMA (detachment-recovery, engagement, affiliation, meaning and achievement) model. The findings provide a better understanding of webcam travel and psychological well-being, establishing potential directions for future researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Virtual reality is providing new opportunities for health and well-being, organizational learning, and tourism management. The study reported in this paper aims to examine whether engaging in a virtual reality tourism experience could function as a restorative intervention strategy to enhance mental well-being of employees in the workplace. The study employed a lab-based pre–post experimental design to test the effectiveness of a virtual reality tourism experience, involving a nature-based marine setting, to enhance mental restoration and reduce mental fatigue. The results show that 3 minutes of a virtual tourism experience can lead to enhanced concentration while boosting the mental well-being of employees, while, at the same time, providing destinations with an opportunity to promote "real" experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on tourists' eudaimonic and hedonic wellbeing has grown exponentially in the tourism literature. The paper re-examines the conceptualization of psychological tourist wellbeing. While there is agreement that tourist wellbeing is multidimensional in nature, it is unclear what specific dimensions, or psychological domains, underpin tourists' hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing. Models that summarize these domains seemingly overlap, notably the PERMA and DRAMMA models. Ideas on re-conceptualizing tourist wellbeing are proposed. A new conceptual model re-organizing hedonic and eudaimonic dimensions of tourists' psychological wellbeing is presented for consideration in future research. This new model is termed DREAMA. It consists of the following dimensions: detachment-recovery (DR); engagement (E); affiliation (A); meaning (M); and achievement (A). The new affiliation dimension now includes both social connections and tourists' connections with the natural environments, thus reframing tourist wellbeing conceptualization beyond human-to-human contact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has seriously impacted the global tourism industry, effecting the livelihoods of millions of tourism workers and disrupting host communities. Current research in tourism management has focused on understanding the economic, social and political impacts of the pandemic. This professional perspective aims to examine operational adaptations that businesses in the fright tourism industry have adopted under the COVID-19 pandemic circumstances. The study collated industry association press releases, undertaking content analysis to examine the changes businesses employed to adapt during the pandemic. Findings suggest that businesses made a variety of operational changes, such as changing queueing, diversification of props and changes to make-up hygiene, allowing these businesses to survive pandemic imperatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite limited recent contributions, explorations of the human emotion of love are underexplored in tourism studies. Love can be defined as both companionship (such as friendship) and as passion (romance and sexual connection). The aim of this article was to explore how the concept of love can be integrated into tourist motivation and satisfaction research. With this aim in mind, a literature review of tourist motivation, satisfaction, and types of love was conducted. The findings, as summarized in a table, show that love is a motivator for tourist experiences, because love resembles established tourist motives, such as the motives for social interaction, kinship and relationship enhancement. As a powerful human emotion, the concept of love helps in better interpreting fulfilling, on-site tourist experiences, and in better understanding post hoc tourist satisfaction. The article proposes research directions for future examinations of love in tourist motivation and satisfaction research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the institutional forces behind the uptake of corporate social responsibility in the Tanzanian tourism industry. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with 40 managers of tourism businesses. We identify six main motivations for businesses' engaging in corporate social responsibility: maintaining social legitimacy; influence of the parent company; meeting community expectations; attracting tourists; caring for the environment; and the personal values of managers. Barriers to engagement with responsible practices include conflict with local communities over resource use and a tax and regulatory regime that hinders the growth of tourism businesses. Using institutional theory as our analytical framework, the paper indicates that understanding embedded local institutional conditions is critical not only in shaping the uptake of responsible tourism practices but also in enhancing businesses legitimacy and social license to operate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, tourism and positive psychology has developed as a humanist-inspired study of individual flourishing in tourism. This conceptual article aims to elaborate on epistemological foundations of tourism and positive psychology research and presents an overview of current trends and future directions for this field. The rapid rise of positive psychology within and outside tourism studies is analyzed, noting similarities and tensions between positive psychology and its predecessor, humanistic psychology. We present research highlights from the emerging field in tourism, review extant literature, discuss the limitations of this approach and suggest directions for future research. Greater focus on research about eudaimonic tourist experiences is recommended, through positive psychology lenses. Suggestions are also made to further expand the traditional focus on tourist behavior to include the well-being of host communities and tourism workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tourism research on topics such as happiness, quality of life of tour-ists, and tourist well-being has flourished in recent years. This literature clarifies the subjective value of tourist experiences, provides new direc-tions for tourism branding and promotion, and opens doors to fresh re-search on the potential benefits of tourist experiences to mental health. Subjective well-being theory has been typically used by tourism re-searchers to help conceptualize and measure tourist happiness. In lay terms, this theory suggests that happiness is life satisfaction and pleas-ure; the theory is popular and useful but cannot explain tourist happi-ness. To craft a more complete picture of tourist happiness, a deeper qualitative appreciation of meaningful tourist experiences and special and engaging tourist moments is required. This brief critique highlights the problems of conceptualizing tourist happiness and suggests an al-ternative approach to the subjective well-being theory. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]